October 2002
Volume 40 Number 5

Participatory Approaches to Program Development and Engaging Youth in Research: The Case of an Inter-Generational Urban Community Gardening Program

Marianne Krasny
Associate Professor
Internet Address: mek2@cornell.edu

Rebekah Doyle
Extension Associate
Internet Address: rld22@cornell.edu

Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Introduction

Recently, scholars have called for more participatory approaches to Extension, citing failures of what is perceived as the top-down, one-size-fits-all technology-transfer model (Ison & Russell, 1999). Critics claim that participatory approaches are especially crucial in programs that require holistic approaches rather than changing a single technology at a time (e.g., sustainable agriculture) and where environmental and socio-economic conditions vary widely among sites (Roling & Wagemakers, 1998). In addition, participatory approaches have proven useful in developing educational programs in new subject areas and in working with educators from a diversity of formal and non-formal settings, each with its unique mission and audiences (Krasny & Lee, 2002; Lopez, et al., 1999).

The formation of learning communities is one approach to participatory program development in Extension. Such a community might involve university faculty introducing educators to research-based tools and ideas, and educators then designing and piloting individual programs to meet local needs using their newly developed skills and knowledge. The educators then share the results of their local "experiments," thus furthering our understanding of educational practices (Krasny & Lee, 2002; Roling & Wagemakers, 1998).

For example, through the Explorations from an Aerial Perspective program, Cornell faculty trained county 4-H and other educators in aerial photography and topographic map interpretation, and each educator then designed a local project in which youth conducted a land use investigation using the airphoto and map tools. The resulting program manual includes examples of local programs designed by the educator and youth groups (Barnaba, Krasny, Kasperek, Hoskins, & Hope, 2000).

An evaluation of Explorations from an Aerial Perspective revealed that the program employed an participatory approach to overall program development and that several of the educators developed local programs having many elements of Participatory Action Research (Mordock & Krasny, 2001). These elements included:

• Working with youth to develop research questions,
• Engaging local adults in the subsequent investigations to answer those questions, and
• Conducting an activity to benefit their community based on the results of their research.

Participatory Action Research and several other forms of participatory research, including Participatory Rural Appraisal, were originally developed for use in international settings. The methods attempt to break down the barriers between outside researchers and economically and socially disadvantaged community members, through engaging the two groups in collaboratively identifying and investigating a local problem with the ultimate goal of taking action to improve local conditions (Chambers 1999; Gaventa, 1988). Methods used in Participatory Rural Appraisal include:

• Engaging community members in drawing maps of local resources,
• Diagramming inputs and outputs of a farm relative to the surrounding community,
• Interviewing knowledgeable individuals while walking along a transect of sites in the community, and
• Developing a community action plan (Chambers, 1999; Freudenberger, 1999).

In 2000, Cornell University and Cornell Cooperative Extension-NYC received funding from the USDA Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program to initiate Garden Mosaics, a program through which county Extension and community center educators adapted participatory research tools for use in an inter-generational urban education program (Krasny, Doyle, & Najarian, 2001). The primary goal of the program was for youth to conduct Participatory Rural Appraisal research to document planting practices of ethnic minorities and recent immigrants in urban community gardens and to take an action to benefit the gardens based on their research results. In addition to the educational benefits of youth learning to conduct research, we hoped to use the results of the youth projects to begin developing a database of community gardening practices that would be useful to city planners, community garden activists, and scientists working in urban settings.

Thus, the Garden Mosaics program used participatory approaches at two levels:

• Educators developed and shared means to implement the program; and
• Youth used Participatory Rural Appraisal methods.

It should be noted that there was relatively little participation by adults and youth in determining the overall program and research goals. Much of the initial direction came from the Cornell University and NYC Cooperative Extension program leaders; educators from other cities were invited to help develop the program after the overall focus had been determined.

Because participatory programs demand significant time and often a change in attitudes toward education (Ljung & Gibbon, 2000), it is important to understand what motivates participants, how they benefit, and the challenges they face. Furthermore, programs that engage youth in participatory research often have educational, youth development, and research objectives, and the various participants may have different understandings about the program goals, all of which should be taken into account in program development.

This article discusses the motivations, conceptions of the program, challenges faced in program implementation, and outcomes for participants in Garden Mosaics. The results are then interpreted in light of participatory program development and engaging youth in participatory research. More information about the Garden Mosaics activities and how the educators adapted them to meet local needs can be found in Doyle (2001) and Doyle and Krasny (2003).

Garden Mosaics

We first trained community educators in six U.S. cities (Allentown and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and New York City, Buffalo, and Rochester in New York) in Participatory Rural Appraisal approaches and tools, including:

• Participatory mapping,
• Interviewing,
• Venn diagrams,
• Historical timelines,
• Seasonal calendars, and
• Soil measurements (Doyle & Krasny, 2001; Freudenberger, 1999).

The educators then adapted these tools to develop local Garden Mosaics programs, which engaged youth from community centers and other out-of-school summer programs in conducting the research activities with adult gardeners. The educators were affiliated primarily with Cooperative Extension, although in Rochester they were affiliated with a food security/social action, non-profit organization and in Baltimore they were from a cultural center. Youth participants ranged in age from 9 to 16 years, and the youth and community gardeners were predominantly African-American or Hispanic. The cooperating organization in each city received $5100 to compensate for staff time and related expenses.

Methods

Because Garden Mosaics was a pilot program with numerous components and diverse sites, we chose a qualitative, naturalistic inquiry approach (Patton, 1990) to the research. To ensure rigor in methods and data quality, we adopted several commonly advocated strategies for qualitative research (Lincoln & Guba, 1999), including:

• Triangulating information collected using different methods and at different times,
• Comparing the results with other studies being conducted on Garden Mosaics (Franz, Gregoire, & Savelyeva, 2001), and
• Discussing results with program participants and colleagues.

The program evaluator (R. Doyle) conducted 20 open-ended, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 29 of the 31 educators from the six cities at the beginning, middle, and end of the summer program, and a focus group with 10 educators representing the six educator teams after the summer program. In addition, Doyle conducted 30 open-ended interviews with 28 of the 85 participating youth from the six cities, and four interviews with four of the 26 participating gardeners from two program sites. Decisions about whom to interview were based largely on availability at the time of Doyle's site visits, although an attempt was made to get a representative sample of participants.

Interview questions varied for each group, but in general focused on the program activities, the nature of the participants' involvement, participants' conceptions of the program, their motivations, the benefits they received, and any concerns or challenges. The interviews lasted from 45-90 minutes for the educators and from 15-30 minutes for the youth and the gardeners. Doyle taped and transcribed all interviews and took measures to ensure transcript quality (Poland, 1999).

During her three visits to each of the sites, Doyle also took detailed notes on participant roles, program implementation, and program facilitation. Finally, Doyle reviewed documents, including educator reports, youth journals and essays, and e-mail communications among participants, for content relevant to our study objectives. She used Folio Viewsä 4.2, a qualitative data software program, to code interview transcripts, field notes, and documents into categories and themes that emerged from working with the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

Results

Motivations

Educators were more likely to cite their interest in an innovative project than money as motivation for involvement (Table 1). They also were motivated by the opportunity to strengthen their organization and to network with other groups, and by the funding opportunity. Youth were most likely to be in the program because of the influence of an adult, although they also cited interest in the program as a motivation. Gardeners were motivated primarily by the opportunity to work with youth.

Conceptions About Program

The majority of educators conceived of Garden Mosaics as a youth research project, consistent with the characterization of the program by the Cornell directors. However, educators also felt gardening and inter-generational and multicultural programming were important aspects (Table 2). Similarly, youth indicated they saw this as an opportunity to collect information, although many comments related to gardening per se and to the academic skills they were learning. Gardeners seemed to view the program as an opportunity for youth to learn about gardening and did not necessarily distinguish between the data collection and gardening activities.

Program Outcomes

Educators identified professional development, enhanced ability to develop partnerships with urban audiences and with other organizations, and satisfaction from working with kids and gardeners as important outcomes (Table 3). They also learned about ethnic planting practices and expanded their skills related to gardening, facilitating participatory research, and working with youth.

The most frequently cited outcomes for youth included enhanced gardening skills and developing positive relationships and learning from gardeners, who came from a variety of cultural backgrounds (Table 4). Youth also developed teamwork, academic, and research skills; responsibility; an interest in and appreciation for gardening, the role of gardens in their community, and the broader environment; and increased knowledge about plants and soils.

The gardeners felt being appreciated by and interacting with youth were the most important outcomes; several gardeners formed long-term mentoring relationships with youth (Table 5). Less important outcomes included help in the garden and exchanging knowledge with educators.

Challenges to Program Implementation

The most important challenges faced by educators related to trying to engage youth in facilitating the Participatory Rural Appraisal research activities. Educators experienced difficulties conveying the activities to youth, engaging youth in the research, helping youth conduct the activities with the adult gardeners, and getting youth to document the results of their research. Other challenges related to language differences among participants, logistics (e.g., scheduling times when gardeners and youth could meet at the gardens, transportation of youth to the site), and working with youth with limited academic and social skills.

Discussion

A number of recent monographs have demonstrated the success of a learning community approach to technology development, emphasizing the role that farmers and natural resource managers can play in enhancing our understanding of agricultural and land management practices (Cerf, Gibbon, Hubert, Ison, Jiggons, Paine, Proost, & Roling, 2000; Ison & Russell, 1998; Roling & Wagemakers, 1998). Similarly, our experience with previous programs and with Garden Mosaics indicates that engaging Extension educators in a learning community presents relatively few challenges and results in positive outcomes for educators and program development (Doyle & Krasny, 2003; Krasny & Lee, 2002).

Fundamental to participatory program development is a strong commitment to learning among all participants. Although their organizations received $5100 for participation in Garden Mosaics, the educators were motivated primarily by their interest in learning new approaches and the opportunities for strengthening their county programs. The outcomes they cited paralleled their motivations; educators gained most from learning new professional skills and the opportunities networking provided to enhance their programs, particularly with urban audiences. Similarly, we have found interest in learning, teaching, and improving natural resources management is more important than financial and other material incentives in programs that used a participatory approach to develop best management and educational practices focusing on invasive species (Krasny & Lee, 2002) and on cultivation of selected maple seedlings (Krasny, Staats, Smallidge, & Winship, 2001).

The Garden Mosaics educators developed and field-tested with youth numerous ways to implement the participatory research activities. Thus, they contributed invaluably to our understanding of how best to conduct a Participatory Rural Appraisal project with youth as facilitators (Doyle & Krasny, 2003; Krasny, 2001). Such learning from local "experiments" is consistent with learning communities.

Engaging youth in participatory research proved more challenging than engaging educators in participatory program development. Initially we thought that because researchers working in urban, multicultural settings in the U.S. face many of the same issues as researchers working in developing countries (e.g., cultural and language differences, defining the role of research in promoting positive social change), we would be able to apply a participatory research approach developed for international settings to our work.

However, we faced challenges related to balancing our interests in collecting information on ethnic gardening practices that would be useful to scientists and community gardening activists with the interests of youth and community gardeners. Thus, the youth and community gardeners had only limited opportunities to help define the research, an important aspect of participatory research. We were more successful in breaking down barriers between outside researchers and community members, by having youth, who were able to form positive relationships with the gardeners, facilitate the research.

Other university researchers have experienced similar difficulties in trying to balance their own goals with a commitment to including community members as partners in their research and in some cases switched to more directed research after finding that they were not meeting their research objectives using participatory methods (Saldivar-Tanaka, 2001). In contrast, Australian researchers were able to successfully maintain a participatory research approach with sheep farmers, but they were interested in the outcomes of the participatory process and did not have their own research objectives related to sheep production (Ison & Russell, 1999). Similarly, researchers who were interested in the process of youth engagement, as well as educators who did not have research goals, have successfully facilitated participatory research projects in which youth determined the research and action objectives (Mordock & Krasny, 2001; Solomon, 1997).

In addition to the difficulties of trying to balance the researchers' and youths' interests, we faced challenges related to building the youths' facilitation and research skills and to defining the role of the youth and educators. Unlike university researchers conducting participatory research in developing countries, the youth in Garden Mosaics were simultaneously community members and "outside researchers." Similarly, the educators were both outsiders and community members and were less versed in participatory research skills than university researchers would have been.

Finally, because engaging youth in participatory research is a relatively new area, we may not have successfully communicated the program goals and participatory research methods to educators, who in turn may not have communicated them to the youth and gardeners. Complicating the situation was the fact that educators had their own goals, only some of which related to youth research. Although the varying conceptions educators held of Garden Mosaics may have limited our ability to engage youth in participatory research, including a diversity of educators resulted in other positive outcomes for youth, such as the development of gardening and academic skills and positive relationships with gardeners.

Conclusion

Garden Mosaics was most successful in forming a learning community of Extension and other community educators and university faculty who explored how to conduct a youth participatory research program. During a subsequent year of the program, in which we revised our educator training based on what we learned from the first-year participants, we were better able to engage youth in the research activities, but still faced challenges having to do with youth interest and logistics.

Engaging youth in participatory research has great potential to facilitate youth development, science literacy, community development, and community activism, all areas of interest for Extension. However, Extension and 4-H educators, volunteers, and youth may not be familiar with participatory research and may question how such an approach might fit in with their other priorities. Thus, as we look toward the future, it will be important to take into account educator, youth, and gardener interests and motivations, and design ways to better meld them with our interests in engaging youth in participatory research.

Recently, Garden Mosaics received a grant from the NSF Informal Science Education program to expand our efforts to 11 cities across the U.S. We continue to evolve the program based on the insights and experiences of our learning community of faculty and educators from Extension and non-profit gardening organizations.

In light of the challenges we initially faced trying to engage youth and urban gardeners in Participatory Rural Appraisal, we are pursuing a slightly different model, which we call "Youth Action Research." The model attempts to better balance the interests of the adult researchers in collecting useful data, the need to provide guidance to novice youth researchers, and the importance of youth and community members having a voice in defining their local projects.

Under this model, the youth at each site pursue research objectives defined by the Garden Mosaics learning community of Cornell faculty and local educators, but they also have an opportunity to add their own research questions. Based on the results of this initial research, the youth and gardeners then define an "action" to benefit the gardeners and are encouraged to pursue additional research projects based on their own interests (Krasny, Doyle, & Najarian, 2002).

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